Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: May 9, 2025

[Adam Isacson]

https://www.wola.org/2025/05/weekly-u-s-mexico-border-update-alien-enemies-pushback-military-zones-third-country-renditions-congress/

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: May 9, 2025

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

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(Due to staff travel, this Update does not cover developments after the early morning of Thursday, May 8.)

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

• Alien Enemies Act invocation dealt setbacks: Three federal judges’ rulings have challenged the basis of the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to target those it suspects of ties to Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua criminal organization. The judges call into question whether the gang’s presence constitutes a “predatory incursion” from the Venezuelan government, justifying the use of the 1798 wartime law. A newly declassified consensus document from the U.S. government’s intelligence community comes to the same conclusion: that Venezuela is not sponsoring Tren de Aragua activities in the United States.
• More migrants charged with trespassing in “Defense Areas”: More than 200 migrants have now been arrested and charged with trespassing on a military installation since the Trump administration declared a 60-foot fringe of territory along the border in New Mexico to be a “National Defense Area.” The move has created confusion in federal courts and concerns about avoiding longstanding bans on military participation in law enforcement. The administration has declared a second defense area in west Texas, east of El Paso.
• Updates on third-country migrant renditions: It appears that the administration was close to deporting a group of migrants to Libya until a federal judge intervened. The May 7th episode highlights ongoing diplomatic efforts to convince several troubled countries to accept more migrants removed from the United States. A Washington, DC judge sought answers about who has custody of the roughly 288 Venezuelan and Salvadoran people sent to El Salvador’s mega-prison, while new details emerged about those renditions.
• New cases highlight the humanitarian impact of Trump administration crackdown: Seven migrants have died in ICE detention centers since the Trump administration began. A Guatemalan woman who gave birth in a Tucson hospital narrowly avoided being removed with her newborn or forced to leave the baby in the United States. Media coverage looked at other separated families while President Trump and Stephen Miller voiced opposition to guaranteeing due process for noncitizens.
• Congressional updates: Republican majorities in both houses of Congress continue to work on a massive bill that includes big spending on deportation and hardening of the border. The timetable for likely passage is slipping amid unrelated disagreements. Data points and questionable assertions emerged as DHS Secretary Kristi Noem testified before House appropriators.

THE FULL UPDATE:

Alien Enemies Act invocation dealt setbacks

The federal courts and the U.S. government’s intelligence community dealt two setbacks to the Trump administration’s March decision to employ the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime statute, against citizens of Venezuela whom administration officials believe to be members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal group.

On March 15th, the White House issued a proclamation stating that the presence of members of Tren de Aragua constituted a “predatory incursion” carried out by Venezuela’s authoritarian government. The proclamation argued that this met the condition for using the Alien Enemies Act—a draconian statute used only three times before—to round up suspected members of the group and remove them from the United States without due process.

On March 15th, shortly after publishing the proclamation, the Department of Homeland Security sent 137 Venezuelan men to El Salvador, where they are now in the Salvadoran government’s feared Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) prison. Approximately 151 more Venezuelan and Salvadoran citizens are also now in the CECOT, indefinitely and without a judicial sentence, after reportedly receiving final removal orders from immigration judges.

Federal judges begin questioning the basis of the White House’s proclamation

A few federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have effectively suspended further use of the Alien Enemies Act for now by requiring minimal due process guarantees or temporarily suspending renditions to El Salvador from some jurisdictions. It was not until May 1, however, that judges began challenging the March 15 proclamation itself by disputing its central claim about the existence of a “predatory incursion.”

As of May 7th, three judges have now disputed that claim:

• May 1: U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. in Brownsville, Texas—a Trump appointee— blocked the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to detain, transfer, or deport anyone from southeastern Texas. As noted in WOLA’s May 2 Border Update, Judge Rodriguez found that the White House’s proclamation ran “contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.” If the administration appeals this order, as is likely, it would go to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The Associated Press observed, “That is among the nation’s most conservative appeals courts and it also has ruled against what it saw as overreach on immigration matters by both the Obama and Biden administrations.”
• May 6: U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan—a Clinton appointee—also blocked the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act. He found that the White House has not proved that an incursion into the United States has taken place: Tren de Aragua “may well be engaged in narcotics trafficking, but that is a criminal matter, not an invasion or predatory incursion.”
• May 7: U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Colorado—a Biden appointee— strengthened an earlier temporary restraining order by replacing it with a firmer preliminary injunction. Like the other judges, Sweeney concluded that Tren de Aragua’s activities do not constitute an “invasion” or a “predatory incursion.”

At Politico, Kyle Cheney noted that federal courts have been pushing back on many elements of the Trump administration’s crackdown on migration. In addition to disputing the Alien Enemies Act invocation, judges have suspended deportations to countries other than a migrant’s country of origin; halted attempts to cancel some nationalities’ Temporary Protected Status; demanded the return of two men in the CECOT who were removed from the United States in error (see below); reversed efforts to detain and remove international students; limited warrantless Border Patrol arrests in California; restored some refugee admissions; and blocked efforts to undo birthright citizenship.

In Boston on May 5, the First Circuit Court of Appeals also upheld a district court’s order preventing the administration from revoking the temporary humanitarian parole status that the Biden administration had granted to some citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Intelligence community contradicts the White House proclamation

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified an April 7 memo from the National Intelligence Council, which provides policymakers with intelligence analyses drawn up by the 18 agencies that make up the U.S. government’s “intelligence community.”

This “sense of the community” document dealt a significant blow to the Trump administration’s rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act. It reported a consensus view that the Venezuelan government does not direct or command Tren de Aragua, which means that it is not carrying out a “predatory incursion” in the United States. “While Venezuela’s permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the [President Nicolás] Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.” In addition, “most of the IC [intelligence community] judges that intelligence indicating that regime leaders are directing or enabling TDA migration to the United States is not credible.”

This directly contradicts language in the March 15 White House proclamationinvoking the Alien Enemies Act: “TdA is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States. TdA is undertaking hostile actions and conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.”

Though basing itself on information that the other agencies did not find credible, the FBI partially dissented from the intelligence community’s conclusions, contending that Venezuela’s government has encouraged Tren de Aragua to operate in other countries in South America and the United States to destabilize them.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, noted that the memo not only undermined the Trump administration’s Alien Enemies Act narrative, it also contradicted recent denials from Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard and other officials about the memo’s findings, which had leaked in earlier reporting. “It’s extremely concerning to see the DNI misrepresent nonpartisan Intelligence Community assessments,” read a statement from Sen. Warner. “It’s even more alarming to see this happening as part of an effort to give legs to Donald Trump’s unconstitutional attempts to expulse [sic.] migrants without due process.” In an email to NBC News, Warner’s counterpart, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), said he looks forward to a reporter “questioning his Democrat friends as to why they continue to defend foreigners who seek to do harm to their constituents.”

Enemy combatants?

CNN reported on May 2nd that the administration is internally discussing the possibility of labeling some suspected organized crime or gang members as “enemy combatants,” a category used against members of terrorist groups engaged in hostilities against the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks. That would probably mean keeping these suspects in U.S. military custody, something that seldom happened to individuals arrested on U.S. soil during the Bush-era “global war on terror.” It would not mean that these individuals could be denied due process or the chance to dispute their rendition to other countries.

“Everything they’re doing is hunting for the one weird trick to make deportations unreviewable,” an unnamed “former defense official who left the Defense Department earlier this month” told CNN. “It’s a big game of whack-a-mole right now for the courts, but they are whacking away.”

New additions to terrorist list

On May 2nd, the US State Department added two of Haiti’s criminal gangs to its list of foreign terrorist organizations. It is unclear whether listing Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif is related to the administration’s migration policies. Still, it is worth noting that Haiti is a country to which deportations are difficult, and that Tren de Aragua’s addition to the “terrorist list” came shortly before the group’s citation in the Alien Enemies Act invocation.

Reuters meanwhile reported that the Brazilian government rejected a State Department request to add to the “terrorist list” Brazil’s two largest criminal networks, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV).

More migrants charged with trespassing in “Defense Areas”

On April 11, the Trump administration declared that the “Roosevelt Reservation,” a 60-foot-wide strip of land along the border west of Texas into California, would become a “National Defense Area”—basically a long, thin extension of nearby military bases—for at least three years. As reported in WOLA’s May 2 Border Update, starting on April 24 some migrants apprehended in this zone have been charged with unauthorized entry on military property.

The Washington Post reported that more than 200 migrants have now been arrested and are facing these criminal charges. All the arrests so far have happened in New Mexico, the first territory to be declared a National Defense Area. Soldiers have made none of the arrests, though a spokesperson for the Defense Department’s “Joint Task Force Southern Border” told Stars and Stripes that military personnel played an “instrumental” role in some Border Patrol arrests. The citizenships of those prosecuted include Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Pakistan, Turkey, and Venezuela.

The possibility of soldiers holding or briefly detaining migrants or any other civilians on U.S. soil is very unusual, and normally prohibited by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which under most circumstances prohibits military involvement in law enforcement. An analysis by Matt Shuham at the Huffington Post found that the Trump administration is using National Defense Areas, extending the boundaries of military bases, to make an end run around Posse Comitatus.

The law does have exceptions—including something known as the “military purpose doctrine,” which allows military activity on U.S. soil as long as it primarily furthers military function. The idea behind Trump’s new guidance is that soldiers are protecting military installations from trespassers, not technically enforcing immigration law or guarding the border.

Ryan Ellison, the newly appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico, told the Washington Post that arrested migrants are facing up to three charges, and some are facing all three.

• The first is the standard “improper entry” misdemeanor under section 1325 of Title 8 U.S. Code, which prosecutors have the discretion to apply to any migrant who crosses the border without inspection between ports of entry. First offenders can be fined up to $250 and sentenced to up to six months in federal prison.
• The second is “violation of security regulations” under a section of Title 50 U.S. Code, which carries a penalty of up to a year in prison and fines of up to $100,000.
• The Washington Post explained, “They also might face charges for violating part of Title 18, the federal criminal code, which makes it unlawful to enter a military property ‘for any purpose prohibited by law or lawful regulation.’” This carries a penalty of up to six months in prison.

While all arrests known so far have happened in New Mexico, on May 1 the Defense Department declared a second National Defense Area stretching from east of El Paso about 50 miles to Fort Hancock, Texas. (A Northern Command spokesperson told the Huffington Post that it is “approximately 63 miles.”) While the New Mexico zone is officially considered part of Fort Huachuca in southeast Arizona, the Texas zone is considered part of Fort Bliss, a sprawling army base outside El Paso. Because much of Texas’s border is privately owned, this “Texas National Defense Area” has gaps in it, two defense officials told the Washington Post.

The Post reported that the wave of arrests has created confusion in New Mexico’s federal courts. “Chief Magistrate Judge Gregory B. Wormuth in New Mexico ordered government lawyers last week to submit a brief explaining, in their view, the legal standards required to convict someone of trespassing on military property,” including whether it was necessary to prove that those facing charges knew that they were breaking a law.

The Defense Department has posted small laminated signs in English and Spanish at regular intervals, informing that the strip of land is Defense Department property. “The signs do not warn people that they could be prosecuted for trespassing,” the Post noted. They are also posted well within U.S. territory: those crossing from Mexico can only read them after already trespassing.

The transfer to military control of borderland in El Paso led one of the city’s most active civil society groups, the Border Network for Human Rights, to cancel what would have been its 12th annual “Hugs Not Walls” event at the Rio Grande. At this event, relatives in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, who cannot see each other in person because of visa restrictions, get an opportunity to briefly converse and make physical contact. “It is important to understand that the local officers that we talked to were sympathetic and they understood,” said the Border Network’s executive director, Fernando Garcia. “But what happened was that a political decision was made that this event shouldn’t happen any longer.”

In other news about U.S. military involvement in migration missions, the New York Times’ Carol Rosenberg reported on the Defense Department’s dwindling usage of the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station as a place to hold detained migrants, to hold migrants apprehended in the United States.

Though President Trump said in late January that he expected 30,000 people detained at the base in southeastern Cuba, as of May 4th the facility was holding 32 migrants awaiting deportation elsewhere. “A total of 497 migrants have been held there for just days or weeks, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses the base as a way station to hold small numbers of detainees designated for deportation.” Rows of tents to accommodate future detainees, assembled at a cost of $3 million, have since been taken down because they did not meet Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention standards and because plans changed.

About 725 people were staffing the facility, about 100 of them employed by ICE, down from about 1,000 when the base first came into use for this purpose in February. “That is more than 22 uniformed military and ICE workers for each migrant,” Rosenberg noted.

In his latest monthly report documenting deportation and removal flights, Tom Cartwright of Witness at the Border found zero military planes taking migrants to Guantanamo in April, following only one in March and 17 in February. Cartwright did count 11 civilian ICE contractor aircraft flying to or through Guantanamo in April.

Updates on third-country migrant renditions

Libya

A May 7th federal court ruling appears to have halted a planned U.S. military deportation flight to Libya. Those aboard were reportedly to be migrants from Southeast Asian countries like Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and possibly from elsewhere.

As media reports emerged about a flight (and a possible flight plan) to Libya as early as May 7, attorneys rushed to U.S. District Court Judge Ryan Murphy in Boston. Murphy is presiding over the D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security litigation, in which plaintiffs seek to protect migrants from being denied a meaningful chance to challenge their removals to third countries, particularly on the grounds that such removals would endanger them. On March 28, the Judge had granted a temporary restraining order halting such rapid removals.

“What we’re hearing from relatives is that, yesterday [May 6], ICE officers at the South Texas Detention Facility gathered 1 Vietnamese detainee, along with 5 others (including 1 from Laos) into a room and told them that they needed to sign a document agreeing to be deported to Libya,” read an email between attorneys submitted as an exhibit to the court. “When they all refused, they were each put in a separate room and cuffed in (basically, solitary) in order to get them to sign it.”

Another exhibit warned, “Apparently ICE is sending some Mexican nationals to Libya as well.” If accurate, a rendition halfway around the world of people from Mexico, a contiguous country that places no limits on deportations, would show the Trump administration going to enormous lengths and expense to carry out a nakedly punitive move.

Media coverage pointed out that Libya is a very dangerous place to send migrants from other countries. The State Department’s annual human rights reports, Reuters noted, criticized the country’s harsh and life-threatening prison conditions. The State Department has a Level 4 travel advisory for Libya, the highest level of danger these advisories report, CBS News recalled. The New York Times cited a 2021 Amnesty International report warning that Libya’s migrant detention facilities are a “hellscape,” with rampant sexual violence perpetrated against the detained.

Judge Murphy issued a written order stating that any rendition to Libya would violate his temporary restraining order. Meanwhile, both entities that claim to govern Libya denied having any knowledge or having given any consent for a U.S. removal flight.

Rwanda and elsewhere

The central African nation of Rwanda is in what its foreign minister calls the “early stage” of talks with the Trump administration about hosting third-country migrants there. The Associated Press, citing local media reports, noted “that the U.S would likely fund a program to have migrants integrated into the society through stipends and job assistance initiatives.”

Like Libya, Rwanda has experienced a brutal civil war in the past 30 years and is not considered democratic. The Trump administration sent an Iraqi citizen to Rwanda earlier this month, and a Rwandan official told the Washington Postthat “we’re open to others.”

Adding to earlier reporting from the Wall Street Journal, CBS News listed several African and Eastern European countries the Trump administration identified as possible destinations for third-country migrants: Angola, Benin, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Libya, Moldova, and Rwanda. Representatives of the Equatorial Guinea and Angola embassies later told CBS News that either conversations with the United States were not happening, or that they are not accepting third-country removals. The Washington Post reported that even as it endures Russia’s invasion, the Trump administration has asked Ukraine’s government to take third-country deportees as well.

Panama flight

Panama’s migration authority reported on May 7th that, in cooperation with the United States, it conducted a flightdeporting and expelling 81 citizens of third countries, likely back to their nations of origin. The flight’s first stop was in Senegal, apparently to refuel. The 81 people aboard were 68 men and 13 women, including citizens of Cameroon (28), Nepal (20), India (17), Bangladesh (10), Vietnam (5), and Sri Lanka (1). It is unclear whether any of those aboard were among the 299 third-country citizens the Trump administration sent to Panama in February. Migración Panamá indicated that at least two citizens of India were apprehended in the country for a second time, which seems to point to people migrating through the treacherous Darién Gap region.

In Washington, Judge Boasberg investigates El Salvador renditions

In Washington DC District Court on May 7th, Judge James Boasberg grilled Trump administration lawyers about who truly holds custody over the approximately 288 Venezuelan and Salvadoran citizens rendered to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, and whether President Trump truly does have the power to bring back those who were sent there, some in error and all (or nearly all) without due process. Boasberg is the judge whose March 15th restraining order sought to stop the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly send Venezuelan men to the Salvadoran jail without a chance to defend themselves. The Judge is still seeking to clarify whether Trump administration officials deliberately ignored that order.

“Before Boasberg decides whether the migrants in his case should be returned,” CNN explained, “he first must decide if the U.S. even has custody of them now that they’re in the Salvadoran prison.” Politico noted that he “is now asking for an ‘expedited’ fact-finding inquiry so that he can decide whether to advance the case further,” including statements under oath from administration officials.

Boasberg focused on some of President Trump’s recent statements that seemed to indicate that he did have the power to recall people from CECOT, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man living in Maryland who was rendered to El Salvador despite an immigration judge’s order that he not be returned to his country for his safety. “This has been widely seen as an admission that Trump is defying the Supreme Court, which has directed the administration to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s return,” recalled Greg Sargent at the New Republic.

“Didn’t the president say just last week that he could secure the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia simply by picking up the phone and asking the president of El Salvador to release him? Was the president telling the truth?” Politico reportedthat Boasberg asked Justice Department lawyers, based on the audio of the hearing. The Judge also asked about Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem’s statement, in a March video shot from CECOT, that the prison is “one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use.”

“I’m not going to necessarily parse out every statement,” responded Justice Department attorney Abhishek Kambli. “Sometimes public statements lack the nuance of any given situation.” Boasberg replied, “Is that another way of saying these statements just aren’t true?”

From the Washington Post, an in-depth look at the March 15 rendition flights

A story authored by seven Washington Post reporters took a deep dive into the events of March 15th and 16th, when the administration sent rendition flights to El Salvador even as Judge Boasberg was ordering them to turn around. They found a few new details.

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a March 13th message to El Salvador’s foreign ministry proposing to send as many as 500 alleged Venezuelan Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador within the next 24 hours. The message stated that the Venezuelans would remain in El Salvador for a year “or until a determination concerning their long-term disposition is made.”
• The administration rushed to round up young Venezuelan men and assemble the flights, even though Venezuela had already agreed to accept some flights to Caracas that same weekend. Those flights were canceled after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, possibly because dust storms were complicating flights out of Texas.
• The reason that the planes sat for hours on a runway in Comalapa, Honduras on the evening of the 15th was that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele would not allow the aircraft to land in San Salvador’s international airport until it was closed to commercial traffic for the night, at around 10:00 pm. While it would have made sense for the flights to have avoided the stop in Honduras by leaving Texas later in the day, Trump administration officials likely calculated that the danger of Judge Boasberg issuing an order beforehand was too great.

A second person wrongfully rendered to El Salvador

A story from Politico reporter Josh Gerstein added significantly more detail to the story of “Cristian,” a 20-year-old Venezuelan citizen who was rendered to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act on March 15. On April 24, a Maryland federal judge ordered “Cristian’s” return to the United States, as he had arrived as an unaccompanied minor, had an asylum case, and was protected by a class-action lawsuit settlement giving him and other plaintiffs the right to remain while their asylum claims were processed. He and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, both rendered to El Salvador on March 15th, now have judicial orders confirming that they were removed in error and must be returned.

Gerstein’s article identifies “Cristian” by his real name and talks to relatives who vehemently deny that he had any relationship with Tren de Aragua. His “plight has received much less public attention” than Abrego Garcia, and he “is believed to still be in CECOT.”

Those in El Salvador are having their immigration cases tossed out in absentia

At the New Yorker, Jonathan Blitzer reported that a growing number of those rendered to El Salvador are now having their immigration cases tossed out in absentia because they cannot appear before immigration judges for their scheduled hearings. Immigration attorneys in the United States are trying to keep cases alive by appearing before judges when hearings come up. However, doing that requires knowing the names of all those sent to the CECOT, which the administration has not even shared.

Blitzer spoke to Michelle Brané of the organization Together and Free, who had worked to document family separations during the first Trump administration and oversaw efforts to locate separated children and parents during the Biden administration.

Brané and her team began compiling lists based on the calls they received. This was almost exactly how her work had begun during the family-separation crisis in 2018. Then, as now, the government didn’t have a credible or comprehensive account of who it had swept up while executing its plans. In 2018, the cause was a mix of incompetence, negligence, and a general lack of political will; this time, it appears to be more calculated. “All of this is about power,” Brané said. “It’s about showing they don’t have to play the game.”

Biographies of Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Even as the Trump administration tries to dig up new derogatory information about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, including a closer look at a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee when he was apparently transporting workers to Baltimore as a hired driver, the New York Times and USA Today published thoroughly reported, nuanced investigations into Abrego Garcia’s life. Journalists focused on his childhood in the middle-class San Salvador neighborhood of Los Nogales and his struggles to make a living, start a family, get through his 2019 immigration detention, and improve his personal behavior after two years of domestic abuse incidents following his 2019 release.

New cases highlight the humanitarian impact of Trump administration crackdown

• Spain’s El País reported that seven migrants have died in ICE’s network of U.S. detention centers since Donald Trump took office. Three deaths occurred in Florida, one in Arizona, one in Missouri, one in Texas, and one in Puerto Rico. “The individuals ranged in age from 27 to 55, and came from different corners of the globe: Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Ukraine, and Ethiopia.”
• The most recent death was Marie Ange Blaise, a citizen of Haiti who died on April 25 after complaining of intense chest pains in a south Florida detention facility. “Marie had been complaining of chest pain for hours. They gave her some pills and told her to go lie down. Unfortunately, Marie never woke up,” said Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Florida), the only Haitian-American member of Congress, in an April 30 address.
• The Guardian reported that as the Trump administration ramps up ICE arrests, the agency’s very full detention system is relying on federal prisons to hold some immigrants. Among the five prisons now holding some immigrants are three—Atlanta, Miami, and Berlin, New Hampshire—with poor reputations for squalid conditions. “Some detainees described shortages of food, clothes, toilet paper, and other necessities. Others alleged they were forced to live in dirty, overcrowded cells and unable to access basic medical care and regular outdoor time,” while access to counsel is nearly impossible with little access to phones and no ability to speak in private.
• The Arizona Daily Star and later the Arizona Republic reported on the case of Erika Mateo, a pregnant 24-year-old Guatemalan woman who gave birth in a Tucson hospital after Border Patrol agents found her lost and severely dehydrated in the Sonoran Desert. Mateo gave birth under tight Customs and Border Protection (CBP) supervision; agents prevented an attorney from accessing her to get the needed signature to represent her. Without representation, it appeared likely that Mateo might be placed in expedited removal and forced to choose whether to bring her newborn baby, a U.S. citizen, with her. After a large outcry including protests and a statement from Tucson’s mayor, CBP relented and Ms. Mateo is now living with a friend in Tennessee under an ICE alternative-to-detention program, making her one of perhaps three people to be issued a Notice to Appear after release from Border Patrol custody at the border since January 20.
• The Washington Post and ABC News published detailed new reports about a 2-year-old Venezuelan girl, Maikelis Antonella, who remains in U.S. custody while her parents were separately deported, her father to the CECOT in March and her mother to Venezuela in late April. Both Yorely Bernal and Maiker Espinoza were deported despite having no criminal records or formal charges in Venezuela, Peru (where they had also lived), or the United States. They were detained and separated from their child without evidence supporting DHS’s claims of affiliation with Tren de Aragua. The Post noted that the Trump administration unusually overruled a recommendation from the Young Center, which advocates for migrant children, that the toddler’s return to her mother was in the child’s best interest. She is now in a limbo in the United States.
• The Daily Beast reported on the Parra Vargas family: two Mexican-citizen parents and three children below the age of 10, two of them U.S. citizens. Texas state police pulled their car over on May 1; the father was deported to Mexico, and the mother was given an ankle bracelet and instructed to check in with ICE. When she did that, she, too, was deported; attorneys from the Texas group Grassroots Leadership had to undertake “an around-the-clock effort to locate them,” but ICE would not inform them about the whereabouts of Ms. Parra Vargas and her kids.
• The Washington Post “drew from court records, interviews and news reports” to count 12 U.S. citizens who have been detained or deported by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
• Asked on NBC’s Meet the Press whether immigrants have the right to due process under the Constitution, Donald Trump replied, “I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.” He went on, “It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials.” (The immigration court system completed 704,169 cases in 2024.)
• The deputy White House chief of staff and the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, Stephen Miller, wrote on Twitter: “The right of ‘due process’ is to protect citizens from their government, not to protect foreign trespassers from removal. Due process guarantees the rights of a criminal defendant facing prosecution, not an illegal alien facing deportation.” As MSNBC’s Jordan Rubin and many others pointed out, the Constitution’s text guarantees due process not to “citizens” but to “person[s].”
• Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), who led Republican participation in negotiations with Democrats over “border deal” legislation that ultimately failed in February 2024, told CNN that migrants are entitled to due process: “there is a need to be able to give an opportunity for someone to be able to make an argument before they’re removed in the country.”

Congressional updates

Reconciliation

Having passed its border and migration provisions at the committee level, the House of Representatives’ Republican majority is trying to find consensus on larger tax and spending measures in its version of a behemoth “reconciliation” spending package to fulfill Trump administration priorities. (See the May 2 Border Update and previous Updates’ coverage.) In apparent homage to Donald Trump’s expression, both houses’ Republican leaderships plan to call the border, migration, and tax cut measure the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

The White House meanwhile published a preliminary overview of its 2026 spending request to Congress, called the “ skinny budget.” Without offering much detail, it calls for allocating $43.8 billion from the “reconciliation” bill to DHS’s 2026 budget.

The reconciliation bill—a reference to the infrequently invoked Senate rule that would allow it to pass with a simple majority—is not flying through Congress. While they generally agree on the massive border and migration spending, House Republicans differ on how much to add to the national debt, while Senate Republicans seem inclined to spend more. It is uncertain whether the House will pass the bill by Memorial Day or the Senate will do so by July 4.

WOLA’s May 2 Border Update noted that the bill contains more than $150 billion in new border and migration spending, including staggering amounts like $46.5 billion for border wall building, $45 billion for migrant detention, and over $14 billion for deportations.

“Over the next few years ICE could ramp up mass deportation operations to a level never before seen in American history, making ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the entire federal government,” read an explainer from Aaron Reichlin-Melnick at the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Impact blog. The House bill would increase ICE’s detention budget by 365 percent per year and its transportation and removal budget by 500 percent per year, but the immigration court system would see only a 30 percent annual increase. This, Reichlin-Melnick warned, raises the possibility of people spending long periods in supercharged detention centers waiting for hearings in overburdened courts.

The Senate version of the bill, which has not yet been made public, could include nearly $800 million in reimbursements to the state of Texas for expenses that Gov. Greg Abbott’s $11 billion “Operation Lone Star” border security crackdown incurred during the Biden administration. The Houston Chronicle reported that Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) will push for this payout.

House appropriators hold hearing with Secretary Noem

“The Administration has requested over $175 billion for DHS as part of the reconciliation bill currently under consideration in Congress,” read written testimony submitted by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who appeared in a May 6 oversight hearing before the House of Representatives’ Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

Other bits of information that emerged at this hearing:

• February 25 was the day of the fewest Border Patrol migrant apprehensions at the border: the agency encountered “less than 160” undocumented people. As CBS News reported that agents apprehended 8,400 people in April, last month’s average of about 270 apprehensions per day would be 69 percent greater than that February low point. Some of the increase could be seasonal: spring months are often the heaviest of the year for migration.
• Asked by the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Illinois), whether she believed “that the Constitution grants everyone in our country the right to due process, including non-citizens?” Noem would not provide a “yes” or “no” response.
• About 85 miles of new border barriers, 17 of them “waterborne barriers,” are “in various stages of construction and planning,” the written testimony explained. In oral testimony, Noem said that 77.8 miles have been installed, including “waterborne,” since Inauguration Day. In addition, DHS has signed 11 contracts for over 40 miles of new barriers, “and we still have five contracts that are pending.”
• “In March, fentanyl traffic at the border fell by 54 percent compared to the previous year.” The Secretary was referring to CBP’s seizures of the opioid, but the trend of reduced seizures began well before Donald Trump took office. For instance, January 2025—the last month of the Biden administration—saw 50 percent fewer seizures than January 2024.
• Border district Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) revealed that Border Patrol’s current nationwide personnel strength is 19,327 agents, quite similar to every year since 2017. That is far short of the congressionally funded level of 22,000, calling into question the agency’s ability to recruit enough to increase its personnel strength even if Congress provided it with additional funding. (Cuellar also stated that the current nationwide personnel strength of CBP’s Office of Field Operations is 26,334, “still below the [staffing] model.”)
• Noem stated that CBP recruitment “is up over 50 percent,” and Coast Guard recruitment is up over 108 percent. She did not state the time periods used for the comparison.
• “In my conversations with government officials” in Mexico, Noem claimed, “they’ve indicated to me there could be as many as 500 to 600,000 illegals that never reached our border because when they got to Mexico and heard that our border was closed, they turned around and went back.”
• Noem said that ICE needs “an additional 50,000 beds, 60,000 beds” in its detention system, which would place its capacity (currently funded at 41,500) above a once-unthinkable 100,000.

Increased maritime smuggling, with a tragic outcome

Upon returning from a border visit, Sen. Lankford, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, praised the Trump administration’s crackdown for reducing migration. In an exchange with the Washington Examiner, though, Lankford noted that Border Patrol agents told him of an increase in maritime smuggling of migrants, as smugglers attempt new routes.

This search for new routes has already led to tragedy. On May 6, a panga boat carrying migrants from Mexico washedashore in Del Mar, California, north of San Diego, after capsizing. Four people aboard were “survivors in need of medical care,” ABC News reported, three were deceased, and the survivors said that another nine are missing.

Senate resolution on El Salvador

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) introduced legislation that will require the Trump administration to report on the steps it is taking to comply with court orders regarding people wrongfully rendered to El Salvador. The report must also confirm whether U.S. security assistance has supported the illegal detention of U.S. residents and assess El Salvador’s human rights record. The failure to produce a report that would force a shutdown in security assistance to El Salvador.

Because Kaine’s legislation is privileged under section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act, the Senate must take it to a vote. Kaine is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Western Hemisphere Subcommittee. He is joined by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), who recently visited Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador; Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York); and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration. Counterpart legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.

Other news

• On May 6 and 7 ICE carried out raids in Washington, DC, mainly at restaurants and near schools that offer bilingual education. “Some restaurateurs received paperwork giving advance notice of inspection for employee I-9 forms, while others reported verbal warnings that agents would be back in three days,” reported NBC Washington. “It doesn’t look like they’re targeting criminals, and so it is disrupting,” said Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser. Community organizations like DC Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid and the Migrant Insider newsletter got the word out early, and ICE ended up making few arrests.
• A release from DHS offered a $1,000 “stipend” to migrants who leave the country voluntarily, or “self-deport,” after registering with CBP’s repurposed “CBP Home” smartphone app. The release stated that “the average cost to arrest, detain, and remove an illegal alien is $17,121.” Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council toldthe Associated Press that this is often far from migrants’ best option: “It’s often worse for people to leave the country and not fight their case in immigration court, especially if they’re already in removal proceedings.”
• In a report presenting statistics through April 30, Colombia’s migration agency reported counting 7,592 migrants heading southbound from Panama—effectively giving up aspirations to enter the United States, usually traveling by boat to avoid the Darién Gap—during the first four months of 2025. Of the total, 7,521 were Venezuelan; Colombian citizens don’t appear in the count. Colombia registered 2,919 people boarding boats toward the beginning of the northbound Darién Gap route, 98 percent fewer than during the first four months of 2024.
• In a dispatch from an Indigenous community near the Darién Gap wilderness, the Associated Press reported on the environmental harm caused by “trash, gasoline and fecal matter have been left behind from the 1.2 million vulnerable people who trekked through one of the Earth’s most biodiverse rainforests” before Darién Gap migration began to plummet in mid-2024.
• The latest monthly report on ICE’s deportation flights from Tom Cartwright at Witness at the Border covers April 2025. It found that the tempo of the Trump administration’s flights remains within the “historical range” of what Cartwright has tracked since 2020: 6.0 deportation flights per weekday, slightly below the prior 3-month average of 6.2. There was only one U.S. military deportation flight all month, from Guantanamo Bay to El Salvador on April 13. Counting ICE contractor flights, there were 125 deportation flights overall in April, led by Mexico (31), Guatemala (23), Honduras (16), El Salvador (13), Venezuela (6), Ecuador (5), and Colombia (5, all Colombian planes).
• A report from eight border-area organizations and shelters, principally authored by staff at the HOPE Border Institute in El Paso and Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción in Ciudad Juárez, documented the profound humanitarian consequences of the Trump administration’s restrictive migration policies and Mexico’s increased enforcement cooperation. Tens of thousands of migrants, many with particular vulnerabilities and from a wide variety of nationalities, are stranded in dangerous conditions inside Mexico without access to asylum or legal protection.
• The New York Times also covered the situation of migrants stranded in Mexico, finding at least 3,000 citizens of Venezuela stuck in Mexico’s southern border-zone city of Tapachula. Many of the Venezuelans, denied access to the U.S. asylum system, wish to return home but cannot as they lack funds, “valid passports, transit permits, or identity documents.” An official told the Times that “there are currently thousands of people on the waiting list for a flight to Venezuela.”
• A report by Plan International and Save the Children, based on 155 interviews with migrant children and caregivers, revealed that unaccompanied children migrating through Mexico face violence, lack of protection, and institutional neglect. Many unaccompanied children began their journeys with family members, but “by the time they reach northern Mexico, they’re alone.” Girls stranded unaccompanied in Mexico are especially “vulnerable to gender-based violence, exploitation, trafficking, and forced recruitment by armed groups.”
• The Texas Civil Rights Project and Haitian Bridge Alliance filed a $15 million wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the family of Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, an eight-year-old Honduran girl who died after many days in CBP custody in Texas in 2023, after her parents were unable to convince medical personnel of the urgency of her illness.
• A fact sheet from Human Rights First asserted that the U.S. government, under the Trump administration, is systematically engaging in enforced disappearances of migrants, both within the United States and through extraterritorial renditions, in violation of domestic and international human rights protections.
• “In each case, there is a common pattern: governments are willing to remove individuals from the protection of the law, placing them in a limbo where anything can happen,” wrote WOLA’s president, Carolina Jiménez, at El Faro. “When a state commits enforced disappearances, it’s not just a human rights violation — it’s a warning for democracy.”
• The Arizona Republic highlighted the deep decline in unauthorized border crossings and asylum seeker arrivals in Arizona’s Yuma and Tucson sectors. Asked whether the Trump administration’s border policies are humane, Nieves Riedel, the mayor of San Luis, Arizona, replied, “Not really, but it’s working.”
• A report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that DHS failed to produce Quadrennial Homeland Security Reviews in consultation with stakeholders, a recommendation that emerged from the post-September 11, 2001 process that created the Department. “DHS was to issue the report every 4 years beginning in fiscal year 2009, however, DHS did not issue a report for 9 years following issuance of its 2014 report.”

Adam Isacson (he/him), Director for Defense Oversight

WOLA: Advocacy for Human Rights in the Americas (www.wola.org)

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